Nice write-up…thanks, and congratulations to you on a good result!
I can personally attest (retired All-Navy triathlete and now volunteer/official at this race) to the quality and fierceness of the competition, and also the “Friendship through Sport” that the race engenders across services and with our brothers/sisters in Canada. There are plenty of backstories that can be told, but I think many of this forum’s readers would be interested in knowing how the team competition is organized and how that drives the tactics of the race.
I remember talking with iank at the post-race party who had raced the draft-legal sprint distance before and was comparing yesterday’s DL Oly (“Much tougher”) to the DL sprint experience. But the interesting dynamic that plays out every year is on the bike course where it’s like a bicycling stage race within a triathlon. You do get multiple chase groups and some teams/racers have less incentive to chase (e.g. teams with more faster swimmers in the lead) than other teams. Sometimes chase packs will merge, or stronger cyclists will break away from a chase pack to join the next pack ahead. Other times, and it appeared this way yesterday, the packs all worked equally enough to never merge.
I can’t speak to what team tactics were employed by the teams yesterday, but in my last race there (2009), my race strategy changed multiple times due to the dynamics. I came out of the water in the first large swim group but left T1 with Nicholas Sterghos (this year’s champion, though 2009 was his first AFTC). I knew Nicholas was a great duathlete (because I had read it on Slowtwitch [http://www.slowtwitch.com/...arian_champ_780.html]) so even though he was not my teammate, I (sub-par runner) had incentive to work with him to form an escape. Our escape soon picked up two of my Navy teammates, and was positioned behind three leaders (2 Navy + 1 Army working together) and a solo Air Force athlete who we wanted to be isolated and working alone. I later got a flat rear tire on the third lap, deadsticked my bike 3+ miles to the end of the lap to change wheels, and joined the second chase group that had been behind me. I now had no incentive to chase (my team still had strength in numbers at the front) and I did what I could to slow down the pace of this group but also domestique for another teammate who could outrun this chase group and possible catch up to the leaders if he could get to T2 with fresh legs.
This is definitely a race with tactics and competition like no other, and a “team sport” that I wouldn’t mind seeing more groups try.
I can personally attest (retired All-Navy triathlete and now volunteer/official at this race) to the quality and fierceness of the competition, and also the “Friendship through Sport” that the race engenders across services and with our brothers/sisters in Canada. There are plenty of backstories that can be told, but I think many of this forum’s readers would be interested in knowing how the team competition is organized and how that drives the tactics of the race.
I remember talking with iank at the post-race party who had raced the draft-legal sprint distance before and was comparing yesterday’s DL Oly (“Much tougher”) to the DL sprint experience. But the interesting dynamic that plays out every year is on the bike course where it’s like a bicycling stage race within a triathlon. You do get multiple chase groups and some teams/racers have less incentive to chase (e.g. teams with more faster swimmers in the lead) than other teams. Sometimes chase packs will merge, or stronger cyclists will break away from a chase pack to join the next pack ahead. Other times, and it appeared this way yesterday, the packs all worked equally enough to never merge.
I can’t speak to what team tactics were employed by the teams yesterday, but in my last race there (2009), my race strategy changed multiple times due to the dynamics. I came out of the water in the first large swim group but left T1 with Nicholas Sterghos (this year’s champion, though 2009 was his first AFTC). I knew Nicholas was a great duathlete (because I had read it on Slowtwitch [http://www.slowtwitch.com/...arian_champ_780.html]) so even though he was not my teammate, I (sub-par runner) had incentive to work with him to form an escape. Our escape soon picked up two of my Navy teammates, and was positioned behind three leaders (2 Navy + 1 Army working together) and a solo Air Force athlete who we wanted to be isolated and working alone. I later got a flat rear tire on the third lap, deadsticked my bike 3+ miles to the end of the lap to change wheels, and joined the second chase group that had been behind me. I now had no incentive to chase (my team still had strength in numbers at the front) and I did what I could to slow down the pace of this group but also domestique for another teammate who could outrun this chase group and possible catch up to the leaders if he could get to T2 with fresh legs.
This is definitely a race with tactics and competition like no other, and a “team sport” that I wouldn’t mind seeing more groups try.